The Deafening Silence
by occasionally-maybe-never
Summary: 'Sherlock hopes fiercely that John can hear him, as sometimes coma patients can. He knows that John will understand, that his admission of love isn't a grand, sweeping romantic statement, but simply an expression of truth.' - AU for the start of S3. When Mycroft retrieves Sherlock to bring him home, it's not to John having dinner, but to John on his death bed.


_Say something, I'm giving up on you_

_And I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you  
>And anywhere I would've followed you<br>Say something, I'm giving up on you._

_Say Something – A Great Big World_

_/x/x/x/x/x/_

"John…"

The silence stretches, the tension mounting. Sherlock casts about for the words that usually come so easily to him, streaming from his mouth in an uncensored rush of deduction and salacious wit. But he seems to have no words in his repertoire to express the burdensome sentiment that he is carrying around with him, a rock in the bottom of his stomach. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, steeples his fingers beneath his chin and closes his eyes. Behind the curtain of darkness his eyelids afford he is able to be honest with himself, safe from the harsh and unforgiving fluorescent lighting. He knows exactly what to say, really. But he feels as if there is a distinct lack of air in the room every time he tries to let those words out and he ends up trailing off yet again. Ridiculous, of course.

"I'm sorry."

There, he's said it. Two simple words, three syllables, but _God_ did they take effort! Sherlock breathes heavily through his nose, eyes snapping open to survey any sort of reaction from the other man. Nothing. Sherlock leans forward, eyes wide and pale, to lean his elbows on the side of the bed. John is swathed in white, the sheets starched to a bleached crispness against the dark wool of Sherlock's Belstaff. He looks wrong like this, barely recognizable as the John that Sherlock has known for what seems like forever. The usually weathered skin is pale and drawn, the characteristic roundness of his features gone, to be replaced by hollows and bare angles. This is not his John, this is a specter.

"I left for you."

There, those words flowed a little easier. Sherlock rubs at his temple with long, trembling fingers, too tired to think properly. No, not tired – exhausted. Nearly two years of constant movement and speaking foreign languages, of hiding, running, stalking and _torture_. Sherlock has been taken apart and put back together so many times since his plummet from the top of Barts that he is not entirely sure he knows who he is anymore. His one, shining constant throughout it all was John, _his John_. When he'd been run to ground in Belarus, when he'd lain in a ditch for two days in west Ukraine; the time he'd spent four days in a windowless underground cell in a remote corner of Slovakia… he'd held on and maintained focus by imagining John there with him, stating the obvious with a self deprecating smile.

"I didn't want to deceive you."

Ah, the words are fitting together better now. The iron bands around Sherlock's chest loosen by one or two degrees and he takes advantage, drawing in a deeper breath, wincing against the protesting creak of his bruised ribs. John's face is still chalk white and immobile, but Sherlock fancies that since he has started to talk the creases of discomfort around his friends eyes and mouth have smoothed out to leave him looking peaceful.

"I wanted you to come with me, really. But that would have been selfish John, and for all my many faults I would not do that to you. I _had_ to leave you behind, I had to keep you safe!" Sherlock stops abruptly, chest heaving and aching against the restraint of the bandages under his shirt. The floodgates have opened now and he cannot stop the stream of words. "I almost called you, so many times. I had to dispose of my phone in the end – Mycroft was furious – because the temptation was too much. I would dream, sometimes, of ordinary days at Baker Street; I would dream of you complaining about the three cups of tea I had left undrunk, or you asking me to play a particular piece on the violin. I'd dream of us hurtling through back alleys and over rooftops and sitting in Angelo's. You kept me going John Watson; in some of the darkest moments of my life you kept me alive, and you weren't even there."

Sherlock's voice has acquired a rawness, and his throat feels tight with the inexplicable presence of tears. He runs shaking hands through his hair and pulls at the rebellious mass, trying to ground himself. Sherlock Holmes does not cry. Sherlock Holmes does not give in to the weakness of sentimentality.

Caring is not an advantage.

"I've seen and felt and been subjected to so many terrible things, John. When Mycroft came to retrieve me I was so relieved to be free of it all, to be back home… to be back to _you_." His voice is thick, and he hates it, feeling that it is not really his own. Can John hear him? And if he does, does he recognize his voice? Surely not, John has never heard Sherlock speak in these strange, choked tones before.

"When he told me you were ill, I was beyond rage. If I'd _known_ John, I'd have come home instantly. I'd have returned months ago, Moriarty's web be damned!" The first tear takes Sherlock by surprise and he sits frozen as it ghosts down his cheek, tracking its progress along his jaw until, eventually, it drops softly down onto the sheet, blotting the clinical whiteness with a spot of grey. Before he really knows what he is doing one of Sherlock's hands his grasping at John's limp ones, folded neatly as they are over his chest by a considerate nurse.

"I forbid you from giving up John, I forbid it." Sherlock waits for a long moment but there is no shift of expression on John's face, though he can almost hear his scoffing laughter if he strains hard enough. "I know you always thought I was the brilliant one, John. I know you thought I was the best. But I'm not." Sherlock stops, eyes squeezing shut against the traitorous onslaught of more tears. He draws in a deep, steadying breath, desperate for a cigarette. "It's you, my dearest John. You've always been the pillar of strength and… and I'm not entirely sure how you expect me to continue on without you."

The silence is deafening, ringing in his ears. What he wouldn't give to hear his dearest – his _only_ – friend say something, anything.

"Say something," he whispers, squeezing the hand that he still holds. "Please John, for me."

Sherlock knows everyone thought it bizarre how the Doctor followed him without question – or, at least, without any expectation of his questions being answered – but the truth of the matter is that Sherlock would also have followed John Watson anywhere without a moment's hesitation. Sherlock is well aware of what a difficult, ungracious character he can be, and to have enjoyed several years of John's unshakable, warm friendship is the crowning jewel of Sherlock's life.

"I love you," he informs his friend. "I've never said that to anybody else before. But I do. You're the best man I know, John. I would trade places with you in an instant if I could."

Sherlock hopes fiercely that John can hear him, as sometimes coma patients can. He knows that John will understand, that his admission of love isn't a grand, sweeping romantic statement, but simply an expression of truth. The funny little Doctor with the occasional limp and stiff shoulder and steady hands is the most important person in Sherlock's life, and if that isn't love then Sherlock is even more ignorant of sentiment than he thought he was. Is that romance? He doesn't know. Sherlock thinks back across the years, to the thrill of the chase and leaning against dirty brick walls with John afterwards, laughing with his whole body, sharing a glance loaded with meaning and unspoken words and wondering, fleetingly, what it would be like to kiss him. Sherlock has never been one to trouble himself with the foibles of relationships or physical gratification, but he now finds himself wishing that he had given into impulse, just once, to see if John completed him so thoroughly in yet another way.

"Mycroft should have told me as soon as something was wrong."

Sherlock can feel the gates starting to draw close on his rush of emotion. His sentences are trailing off now, losing syllables.

"I will never forgive him."

_Don't be such a berk, of course you will._

Sherlock hears John's response in his head, as loud and clear as if he had actually spoken.

"I won't," he insists, a trifle petulantly, almost as though the last two years had never happened and he and John were having a perfectly normal conversation back at the flat. Silence falls after that and Sherlock sits quietly, holding John's hand, hardly aware of the fact that his thumb is stroking the thin skin over the back of his knuckles. Everything about this scenario is wrong, but Sherlock cannot get passed the change in John's hands. Sherlock remembers them as a light golden brown, calloused and wide with deft, blunt ended fingers. But the hand he holds now is thin and white, the fingers frail, the skin soft.

Sherlock doesn't know how long he sits there in silence, staring at John's face, peaceful in repose. It wasn't just his imagination, the features have definitely relaxed since Sherlock first sat down, though whether that is anything to do with him is another matter. At several points Nurses appear to check his vitals and make notes on the clipboard at the foot of his bed. Sherlock ignores them. He doesn't speak anymore – he has said everything he needed to say – but he doesn't let go of John's hand either. The quiet whir of various machines and the ticking of the clock on the wall serve only to enhance the silence.

At some point Sherlock drifts off into an exhausted sleep, his head on the bed, his hair curling against John's arm. He dreams of the first time they met, the first time John blinked in surprise and said "Brilliant". In the way of dreams nothing really happens in chronological order, and some parts are completely fabricated. Dream Sherlock is looking through the window, piercing the darkness, the cabbie forgotten at his feet. His eyes pick out John, still with his gun raised, smiling at him sadly from across what feels like an enormous abyss.

"Goodbye Sherlock."

"No!" Sherlock shouts in denial, leaping forward into that abyss that suddenly reveals itself between them, a great yawning blackness that swallows Sherlock whole as he falls, deeper and deeper…

Sherlock awakes with a start, managing to smother his cry of alarm before it has time to escape. He sits up, heart beating wildly in his chest, ribs protesting viciously. There is a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently, murmuring platitudes. Sherlock shakes his head to dispel the high pitched whine in his ears, to better hear what she is saying. The whine won't go, why won't it go? And then, the terrible realisation; the noise he can hear is the flatline on John's life support machine.

John is dead.

"I think he was waiting for you to come," the Nurse is saying sympathetically, her eyes bright. "We see it time and time again, coma patients hanging on for one person."

Sherlock ignores her, standing abruptly, the room swimming. Somebody switches off the machine and the whining stops. The Nurse ceases her babble after one glance at his frozen features. The silence, Sherlock cannot bear it a moment longer. He carefully places John's hand back on top of the other one, brushes his long fingers down the side of John's face just once.

He leaves, walking steadily from the room, barely noticing the shocked murmurs from the residents of the corridor, lined up outside of John's room in vigil. His mind, detached from events as it is, clinically notes the cries of disbelief from Mrs Hudson and Lestrade as he drifts silently passed them, pale and swathed in black; John's very own Angel of Death.

Sherlock ignores them all, most specially Mycroft, who lurks at the end of the corridor like a vulture. He walks until he is in the pale, autumn sunlight, the crisp air crystalizing in his lungs and waking him a little from his stupor. Reality catches up with him and a wave of grief almost sends him to his knees.

John is dead, and the silence is deafening.

_/x/x/x/x/x/_

**A/N: **Hello! This is my first attempt at writing Sherlock fiction, though I have written for other fandoms before. I got the urge to write this after reading a few 'Sherlock dies and John watches/grieves', which were brilliant, but I haven't stumbled across a reversed scenario yet, so I thought I'd give it a whirl – angst is my preferred genre to write, anyway. I do hope you enjoyed, and I'd really treasure some feedback, especially in regards to how you felt I wrote Sherlock – was he wildly out of character, just a little, not at all? Would love to know any and all thoughts!

Also, I had intended to write this as JohnLock, but I actually prefer the ambiguity of the way it ended up – I will leave it to you and your preferences to decide if Sherlock loved John platonically or romantically.

Thanks for reading!


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